


The Cold Sinks In

by perniciousLizard



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 13:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5627491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perniciousLizard/pseuds/perniciousLizard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Before he put the gift away and forgot it, he pulled the sweater out of its box and ran his fingers over the material.  It was soft, not the least bit scratchy, and it looked warm without being too heavy.  The color was eye searing.  He put the lid back on."</p>
<p>The prompt was "warm sweaters"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cold Sinks In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [decadent_mousse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/decadent_mousse/gifts).



> This was written for the 2015 pacrim holiday swap on tumblr, and was a gift for decadentmousse.tumblr.com

Hermann was sure that when he left Anchorage, he would never be cold again. Everywhere he went, he would compare it to that period of his life and it would be a warm summer day by comparison.  

Instead, the cold seemed to have settled into his bones.  It refused to shake free, no matter how much tea he drank and no matter how many layers of clothes he wore.  It made him ache, not just in his legs.

The lab he shared with Newton was kept as chilled as possible, for the sake of their computers and Newton’s specimens.  Newt seemed oblivious, rolling up his sleeves and complaining about proper temperature control.  One of his freezers had given up, overnight, and when they returned the scent of ammonia and rot had seeped into every inch of the lab.  

Hermann had thought himself used to the smell of kaiju, by that point.  He had been wrong.  The lab was always kept cold.  If it got too warm, Hermann complained about it himself.  

It was a warm day after Christmas in Hong Kong, and Hermann was up on his ladder trying not to shiver inside his jacket.  It had become night, somehow, when he wasn’t paying attention.

He climbed down, his leg aching painfully, and he almost tripped over a box resting at the bottom.  He was exhausted enough that he stared blankly at it and its cheerful wrapping instead of immediately berating Newton for putting it in his way.

“Man, if you fell over that and died, it’d be more like a gift for myself,” Newt said.  

“Christmas was yesterday, you imbecile, even if I celebrated it,” Hermann snapped.  He grabbed his cane off the rail and knocked the box away with the end of it.  It was Hanukkah, but he was non-practicing and had _not_ practiced since he was a very small child.

“Jesus Christ, Hermann, calm down.  I actually got it for you for your birthday, but,” he shrugged and never finished the sentence.

“That was–”  He shook his head.  His birthday was months ago.  Newton had gotten him a present for it, once before, years ago.  He had received that one around this time, but to give Newt his credit, it had been postmarked only two months late and had gotten delayed in the mail.  When Hermann opened the package, he had found a stack of papers detailing with excruciating precision everything Newt had found wrong in one of Hermann’s publications.  It had taken Hermann a full month to point out all the errors in Newt’s work and respond.

Hermann knocked this new package over to his desk chair and sat down to pick it up off the floor.  He held it in his lap and frowned, expecting something similar to the last gift.  

He neatly tugged off the wrapping paper.  Inside the box, under a layer of glitter-flecked tissue paper, he found a sweater.  He had been so expecting some joke or dig at his work, he stared at it, uncomprehending.  "It’s a shirt.“  

"It’s great to see that you didn’t waste your doctorate, Hermann,” Newt said.  "What the hell were you expecting, honestly?“

It was not particularly to Hermann’s taste, and he would be surprised if it was the correct size.  It was a very bright shade of blue.  "Well, nothing, if I am being completely honest.”

Newt rolled his eyes and yanked his gloves off.  "Why do you have to be a dick about everything?  Well, the results of _this_ experiment were conclusive.  'Thank you’ isn’t in your vocabulary, and you’re just going to keep insulting me by looking at me like I grew two heads because I was _nice_ to you, god.  Yeah, grade A dick behavior.“  

"It really wasn’t necessary.   _Really_.” He closed the box and set it on his desk.  "But thank you.“ It was odd, and late, but more than Hermann had done for Newt’s birthday, so what else could he say?

Newt frowned at Hermann, skeptical.  

"Oh, now you’re looking at _me_ like I’m some monstrous freak for having common decency.  Though, no, if I was one of _those,_ your gaze would be lascivious.”

“The gratitude is just coming off you in waves.  Thanks for that, dude, I never get tired of people implying I want to deep dick a kaiju.”

Hermann winced at the mental image.  "I don’t need the specifics.“    

"Or deep dicking _you_ as a kaiju; now you can’t even say you didn’t get me a Christmas gift, with that thought to carry around with me for the rest of my life." 

Hermann closed the box and started to get up.

"Throw it in the garbage if you have to, but you look like you’re freezing your ass off when other people are passing out from heat stroke.”

“I’m not planning on throwing your gift in the trash,” Hermann said, irritated.  

“Yeah, right.  You aren’t even going to put it on.  It’s getting shoved under your bed and then you’ll throw it away after we save the world and move out of here.”

“It’s a gift.  You have no say in what I do with it, _honestly_.”   

He brought the box back to his room to store away.  He meant to wear it once, if it wasn’t completely uncomfortable, just to show Newton that he was not a completely ungrateful person.  

But that was the sort of matter that got pushed aside and forgotten, with the weight of his work pressing him down until he found he could not move to do anything outside the immediate.  He remembered birthdays, as he could not stop himself from being aware of the date, but he did not remember that they should be celebrated, or even just acknowledged.  He did not call his family, or remember to eat regularly, and his sleep was frequently irregular and often impossible.  

Before he put the gift away and forgot it, he pulled the sweater out of its box and ran his fingers over the material.  It was soft, not the least bit scratchy, and it looked warm without being too heavy.  The color was eye searing.  He put the lid back on.

 

–

 

The images from the drift were tinged a dull blue.  Hermann found himself with little to say to Newt, which was _bizarre._ Even more strange was how when he went to speak and realized there was nothing, Newt would look at him like he understood, completely.  

They did not shadow each other, but time and time again they found themselves in the same place, until they were both outside the door to Hermann’s room.  

Newt finally had something to say to him, then, and it burst out in overwhelming waves at too loud a volume.  Newt was exhausted and erratic, skipping from topic to topic mid-sentence and then back again.  Hermann was sympathetic.

“Come here a sec,” Newt said, patting the bed next to him.  

Hermann realized, just then, that Newt was on his bed.  Sitting there like he had the right to.  Everything was coming to him through a blue haze of exhaustion and aching pain and his back twitched, like he was missing a weight there.  

They stared at each other, and Hermann sat down.  Newt leaned against him. He yawned with his mouth wide open, not bothering to cover it with his hand.  

“If you let me sleep here,” Newt started talking again in a rapid burst of words, “If you let me, I’ll do something for you.”

“Sleep in your own bed.”  Uneasiness was settling in Hermann’s stomach. It felt like he had swallowed a stone.  "What would you do?“ When he saw the look on Newt’s face, he knew and wished he hadn’t asked.  

Matter of fact: "I’ll blow you, dude.”  He looked Hermann over, once.  "I mean, if you want me to.  I would do that.“  He caught up with himself, and flinched.  "Wait, forget I said that.  Unless, I mean–”

It was at this point that Hermann covered his face with his hands and tried to just let Newt’s words pass over him.  

“–but I think I know you better than literally anyone else ever has?  So–”

“My god, Newton, please be quiet.”  

“So that’s a definite no?  Okay.  That’s cool.”  His voice was a little higher.  "It’s fine.“  

Hermann decided that the wisest course would be to just not think about it and move on.  "I’m exhausted, and you’re far worse than I am.” He grasped the handle of his cane, tight, and stood up.  He went over to his plug-in kettle and made them tea.  

Newt was a mess–physically and mentally worn out, bloody and disgusting. By the time he finished drinking the offered tea, he had fallen quiet again.  After he put his cup down, Newt tried to put what they had learned from the kaiju drift into words and try to align it with what he knew from years of study.  He kept slurring his words and he ended up nodding off halfway through the word “decomposition.”  

Hermann left Newt on his bed and watched the news, volume low, just to see the escape pods come up over the water one more time.  He decided not to push Newt off the bed and eventually he climbed in with him.  Newt was passed out over the blankets, but Hermann made a proper effort at sleep–changing into pajamas and getting in under the covers where he would be warm.  He mouth tasted like alcohol, better than what it could have tasted like, and felt like someone had shoved a wad of cotton in there.  He nodded off almost immediately.  

 

–

 

Waking up rarely seemed like a good idea, but when pain would not let him sink back to sleep again, Hermann reluctantly opened his eyes.  He was being stared at.  

“Hermann, man, I know where everything in your room is, check it out.” Newt looked physically worse than he had last night, a bright new bruise coloring the area around the bandage on his forehead, but he seemed alert.  Erratic, more so than normal, but less strange.  "This extra toothbrush is mine now, unless you want a used toothbrush back.“  He snorted.  "Oh, yeah, and this.”  He held up a searingly blue sweater.    

“God,” Hermann said.  He closed his eyes, again.  

He heard Newt get up off the bed and pace around the room.

“Keep out of my things,” Hermann mumbled.  

“I’ve been in here, what, twice before now?  But it’s all _familiar_.” He went around Hermann’s small room, pointing out parts of it and going on a tangent about how memory worked, biologically.  He asked Hermann if he noticed anything similar.  

“Actually you’re right.  My bedroom is strangely familiar to me,”  Hermann said.  He made himself sit up, despite the many ways his body was trying to communicate that it was a poor decision.  

Newt balled up the sweater and aimed for Hermann’s head, but he was not an athlete and it hit the wall and landed on the bed next to him. “Prick.  Come on, this is a big deal.”  

Hermann rubbed his head.  There was something sticky in his hair, and he had no idea what it could be.  "It sounds typical, honestly, what you’re experiencing.  For our situation.“  

"Okay, first off, there is _nothing_ typical about our situation.”

Hermann took out a bottle of pills and as he shook two out into his hand.  He looked up and noticed Newt was looking at him with some amusement. “What?”

“Your hair is sticking up, man, half of it.  It’s very attractive,” Newt said, snorting.    

“Already regretting propositioning me?”   He looked amused, suddenly remembering Newt’s offer.  He was positive Newt had meant it in all earnestness, in the moment, but he had not been in the best state.

Newt paused before answering.  "I was kind of hoping you would never mention that again, ever.  And expecting, actually, that you would do that; never mention it again.“  

Hermann shrugged.  "It’s not like you were in your right mind.”  

Newt walked over and sat down next to Hermann on the bed.  "Technically, you did let me sleep here.  I think it’s relevant so I’m just going to point that out.“  

"I wasn’t really in a state to drag you out of the room.”  He picked up the sweater, lying in a heap next to him, and folded it again.  

“I guess not.”  He rested his head on Hermann’s shoulder.  He was warm–almost unbearably so.  Hermann wasn’t used to it, after so many years of being cold.  He let out a small sigh as the pain started to settle down to something bearable.

Hermann eventually fell back asleep, and Newton was gone by the time he woke up.  He took his time getting out of bed and getting ready–there were things to do, even with the world finally safe.  

He put on the blue sweater without even thinking about it, carefully buttoning it up to his neck.  It was as warm and soft as he had guessed.  He could imagine himself as Newton, seeing it in some store and liking the color.  

He only had a few direct memories from the drift, and a number of vague impressions of events and the feelings surrounding them that he would never be able to place on a timeline or put into words.  He could not recall Newt’s childhood like it was his own.  

But as he looked around his room, he saw it as Newton would have seen it that morning, and when he looked in the mirror he saw himself as Newton saw him. 

The mystery of why Newt had purchased clothes for him was solved, definitively.  Newton had seen it and thought he would like how Hermann looked in it, and built an excuse up around that.  

Hermann straightened his posture and headed out towards the lab, where he knew Newton would be.  It felt warm inside the Shatterdome that morning, almost hot, and the constant rain made his forehead damp with sweat.  He paused to roll up his sleeves before he went inside the lab.  

Newt was over by one of his specimen tanks, hand pressed against the glass, looking lost.  He turned his head, slightly, when he heard Hermann come in, but not enough to look away from whatever had his interest.  

Hermann walked over, taking his time, and rested his hand on Newton’s shoulder.  Newt started, at the contact, and looked at him.  His face lit up.

“Oh, hey,” Newt said.  He grinned, his eyes huge and liquid, all warmth.  

Hermann thought that he would like to kiss him.  

 


End file.
